We received this tip from an alleged Borders employee today. According to this person, if you saw some yellow discount tags of 30% off DVDs and CDs in your local Borders store this weekend, it’s a sign that they’re closing out those sections except for top sellers. Expect to see much steeper discounts in the coming weeks. The full tip is copied below.

WooHoo! I got a job! Right out of college and everything. With an awesome sign-on bonus! Now what am I supposed to do with all this money? I know I have options. Stock Market (HA!), bank, and under my pillow. I would put it in the bank but I have a wedding coming up in less then a year to pay for and I want to know my options for making good quick investments. Please help!

Saw this site, moneyaisle.com, where banks compete with the best rate to get your business in a high-yield savings account or a CD. Sounded interesting, so I tried it out. I said I had $5k to deposit. The best rate they had was 3.51%. In less time it took for that rate to load, I went to Bankrate.com and found a place – yes, the banks on both sites are FDIC-insured – offering 3.91%, and only requiring a $1000 deposit. FAIL.

Remember Sony’s cringe-inducing copy protection scheme a couple of years ago, where they secretly installed rootkits on millions of customers’ PCs and then pretended it was no big deal? (“Most people, I think, don’t even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it?” — Thomas Hesse, Sony BMG’s President of Global Digital Business.) There’s a new article (PDF) about to be published in the Berkely Technology Law Journal called “The Magnificence of the Disaster: Reconstructiong the Sony BMG Rootkit Incident.” It’s a very detailed and entertaining read that examines the conditions that led Sony BMG “toward a strategy that in retrospect appears obviously and fundamentally misguided.”

The fed rate cut means yields on money market accounts and online savings accounts are more than likely going to fall, making it a good time to look to switch money to certificates of deposit, as long as you don’t mind the illiquidity. Here are the best 3, 6 and 12-month CD rates right now with reasonable minimum deposit requirements.

Everybody needs emergency cash reserves for the unpleasant day when your expenses unexpectedly exceed your income. By stashing your reserves in the right place, you should ideally be able to fund your life – rent, food, transportation, utilities, and any other fixed expenses – for at least three months. The Washington Post has a few tips to keep inflation from eroding the value of your pot of emergency cash.

The Federal Reserve Board is expected to cut interest rates soon, and you can bet that banks will quickly follow their lead and slash rates on savings accounts and certificates of deposit. By purchasing a CD now, you can lock in favorable rates ahead of the Fed’s September 18 meeting. From the Chicago Tribune:

“Banks usually are really fast to cut rates and slow to raise,” he said.

Warner Music Group is losing a lot of money, according to Reuters. The company said in a statement:

“This (revenue) decline was driven by a challenging recorded music industry environment as the shift in consumption patterns from physical sales to new forms of digital music continues,” the company said in a statement. “Declines in our physical … revenue were only partially offset by increases in music publishing and digital recorded music revenue.”

So, shoppers, why is that? Crappy music? DRM? Is music too expensive? Do you not enjoy music anymore? Are you broke? Are you buying games for the Wii instead of a CD? Are you a bunch of pirates? Avast.

Bank Deals blog released their latest roundup of accounts and interest rates. Here’s the highest yielding for each category. Be sure to check out the bank’s policies before opening an account, especially as some of these institutions are not exactly name-brand. — BEN POPKEN

Ridiculing Paris Hilton for a lack of talent really is like beating an encephalic poodle with a sack of oranges until you exhaust yourself, only to find it still obliviously drooling out its tongue and staring at you with wide, flickerless eyes. You’re not getting through. And, personally, we tend to suppress an eye roll when guerilla consumerists sneak into shops and ruin the shopping experience of others to get across their obvious, fatuous message.